So about them Admirables
It’s been a difficult couple of weeks for me. I’ve been pretty exhausted trying to basically change from a nocturnal sleeping schedule to being able to be awake for an all-day event at 9 AM, and I’ve been doing my best to work on the Dorbees review which will be… soon. Because I don’t really have much of a schedule here. It’s Animated Atrocity number 120. And I’m also working on something interesting for Admirable Animations number 50. Actually, those two numbers bring me a lot of criticism. One of the biggest questions I get is… why don’t I do more admirable animations, or I do too many atrocities. I thought that I’d make a post addressing one of the more common criticisms that I get. Now, I have a reputation of being bad at taking criticism, and that’s not totally unearned. I react badly to criticism. I don’t know if that’s hypocritical, because taking criticism and giving criticism are two different skills. It works the other way around too. You wouldn’t call a person with thick skin a hypocrite for being unable to give something a good review, even in a medium that he works in. This isn’t helped by a misconception on the internet - that defending yourself from criticism is the same as not accepting criticism. Good criticism is not an easy thing to give. I know this because of how often that I’ve failed doing it, massively. So keep that in mind when I talk about some of my perceived flaws and don’t flagellate myself over them. I am going to be defending myself here. Someone asks why don’t I do as many admirable animations as I do animated atrocities. Let’s start by saying that doing this channel here is my job, and on some level I do need to treat it like a business. And doing Admirable Animations more often than I do now, or as much as Animated Atrocities would totally tank my channel. Numbers… don’t lie. Going through my most viewed videos, discounting the Top 25 Halloween special that is neither atrocity or admirable, there is only one admirable animation - the Top 25 Best Modern Spongebob episodes. But that is misleading, because Top lists get many more views than the average. It’s over 35 videos until we get to the Sandcastles in the Sand review, which is almost three years old at this point. The most viewed non-Spongebob admirable in Gumball’s the Shell, at around 40. Now keep in mind that this is when the shows are popular. An obscure show, like Cadillacs and Dinosaurs doesn’t even get 100,000 views. Now, I don’t mean to say that I do things for views or that views are all that I care about. If that was the only thing that I’d care about, I’d apparently be making Spongebob top 10 lists non-stop. And I probably wouldn’t do admirable animations at all. And I’m not complaining that these videos aren’t getting super awesome views, I’m just stating facts. But, view-count and retention and comments, likes and dislikes it shows me what my audience wants. The demand for atrocities is much higher than the demand for admirables. And this is a job. That’s the pragmatic argument, and the one that I hope the most people will understand. And keep in mind, I’ve done a lot to try and keep view-counts for Admirable Animations high. Reviewed highly requested shows. Reviewed popular shows. Reviewed a movie. I mean, I could make a million admirable animations about Spongebob, but that would defeat the purpose. (Not to say that I’m never going to make another admirable about Spongebob…) Admirable Animations, by definition of showcasing more obscure shows, is rather niche. And I get that there’s a little hypocrisy in there. I’ve complained about networks doing this exact thing - just airing their popular stuff to the exclusion of everything else. So, I do the best that I can not going too far in that direction. It’s a fine tightrope to walk, trying to come up with the best balance. I have been trying to do at least one Admirable a month this year. Epididymal cysts sort of got in the way, but what can you do. Remember, most channels dedicate themselves to only one show because even having two shows creates a risk. But let’s go on more about Admirable Animations in specific. Each review in that series comes out of happenstance. With Animated Atrocities, candidates come to me. If something is really bad or controversial, chances are I’ll hear about it. With Admirable Animations it’s a stroke of luck that my friends got me to watch Bojack Horseman or that I happened to know about a Simpsons episode 20 years ago that relates to our current times perfectly or that I was curious enough to check out a show called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. Well, the obvious counter to that is… why don’t you just review the more popular shows. Ignoring the fact that I do, the answer is that they’re more popular. Admirable Animations is there to help people find the more obscure gems that they otherwise wouldn’t have seen viewing on their own. Finding these things… takes time. Let’s say that I want to do a review of Class of 3000, which I do. First thing that needs to be done is find the footage. A lot of the time, this proves to be an insurmountable obstacle, as there’s plenty of things that never got their fair shake that ended up getting deleted because no one was around to record them. Try finding footage of Robot Jones or Ozzy & Drix, shows that were never given DVD releases. This is a problem with animated atrocities to an extent (if anyone knows what this www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCWWqf… is from please tell me, and also tell me where I can find the full episode), but all it’s more of a problem with good cartoons, even ones that haven’t been forgotten by time. Right off of the top of my head, Kablam. And sometimes they can be prohibitively expensive, like with the Back to the Future cartoon. And then… there’s the time when admirable animations become “special cases.” The only time that Animated Atrocities has had a “special case” was with Shorty McShorts’ Shorts. But a lot of the stuff I want to review for Admirable Animation needs extra work, like a foreign movie with no dub like the Animal Crossing movie, or it can be a smaller series of things like Gregory Horror Show or the Domo anime; things that don’t really have a categorization. And then there’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day, which is… difficult to talk about for every single reason. And nothing is as disappointing as turning heaven and earth to find something that I want to review to find out that it isn’t as good as I thought it might be/remembered. It’s sturgeon’s law - 90% of everything is crap. There are more bad pieces of media than good. We have one Disney, and we have at least three companies that literally exist to do nothing other than badly imitate them. And that doesn’t even include the cheapquels. I hope this helps explain some of the more practical reasons as to why I don’t have as many admirable animations out there. I thought that I’d address this specifically because it is one of the most staunch points both my critics and my fans tend to bring up. I hope that… this helps us reach some kind of understanding. ~~~~ In other news, I’m NOT doing a review of Sausage Party. If you’re wondering, I hear that the film is really good. Raunchy as hell, but good. And because of my history that would probably be your first guess as to why I wouldn’t review this movie. It’s more of the behind-the-scenes stuff. You’ve probably heard that anonymous animators have been complaining about behind-the-scenes working conditions. People say that they left the studio angry after being asked to work overtime without pay, and when the movie came out they weren’t credited for the work that they did do. Being objective, there is no proof right now until people come forward. However, that can come with significant risk and jeopardize future career prospects. We won’t truly know what happens until at least the studio responds with something than dead air, but if there’s something specific that points to this story being true it is the budget of the movie - 19 million dollars, unanimously considered to be very small for this project. This is comparable to Norm of the North, which had an 18 million dollar budget Here’s a news story about it, if you’re interested. I refuse to give this product any publicity, either positive or negative. And yes, I would have given it a review otherwise. If it was good, it proves that animation or adults can be brought to theaters. If it was bad, well then I could have reviewed it for the same reasons that I reviewed the Drawn Together movie. However, I don't know if it's good or bad because I'm not seeing it. variety.com/2016/film/news/sau… Category:Miscellaneous